Re: THEORY: irregular conlangs

Thomas R. Wier <artabanos@...> wrote:

> The best way to make your language look really naturalistic is
> to layer regular systems over one another.  This can be just like
> I described for English above, just within one category of words
> like verbs, or it could be for pit the semantic makeup of words
> against, say, their phonetic form.
Oh, that's exactly what I love to do in Drasel=E9q. Small but
noticeable irregularities of phonetic origin, like the ones
you have in Phaleran. For example:

        _fa_ 'this one'
        _fes_ 'this'
        _fais_ 'this one (GEN)'
        _f=E4n_ 'this one (ACC)'

from underlying *_fa, fais, faais, faen_.

Or the verbs will double stems, like _tupsen_, which conjugates
as _tups, touber, tup, toubut, tupser, toubek_ or _=FCblithten_,
which goes _=FCbelitht, =FCbelther,...,=FCblithtat, =FCblithter, =FCbelth=
ek_.

Plus there's a lot of semi-irregular nouns where vowels in unstressed
open syllables are syncoped when you add case inflections. (It's
irregular because vowels that derive from a shortened formerly long
vowel *don't* get syncoped.) Or nouns where a final stop is geminated
when a vowel-initial inflection is added:

        _pat_ 'side'
        _pattadh_ 'the sides'

from old _batta_.


--Pablo Flores
  http://draseleq.conlang.org/pablo-david/